Haunted
by Ridell
Summary: FE9/10 Bitterness iced the edges of her heart, because that beautiful boy looked so much like his father... IkeElincia, some GeoffreyElincia


**Haunted**

* * *

_Author's Note:_ I'm baaack! Reading one of the comments from my previous story All The King's Horses, I came across a review about how I should finish this as a trilogy. Well, originally, I wasn't going to (sorry...) because I simply couldn't find the inspiration or even the proper ideas of how to even start. I was curious, however, and then ideas started bouncing around in my head, and eureka!! I plucked this idea off my feeble tree of creativity. Toying with the ideas was the easy part. Now I had to somehow get this down in text, and I know I was walking in uncharted territory. So, I played around with different drafts and played Fire Emblem some more. And it finally came together.

Another quick note...If you haven't read the previous two installments (Angel Queen/All the King's Horses), I highly suggest you do, because otherwise you're going to be completely bewildered as you read this. All The King's Horses, however, does contain mature content, so read at your own risk. You should be okay with Angel Queen.

And now, without further ado, I present to you the final installment of the "Angel Queen" series.

Father ado: Mmm, pie.

Love, Ridell

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_Did I disappoint you or let you down?  
Should I be feeling guilty or let the judges frown?  
'Cause I saw the end before we'd begun,  
Yes I saw you were blinded and I knew I had won.  
So I took what's mine by eternal right.  
Took your soul out into the night.  
It may be over but it won't stop there,  
I am here for you if you'd only care.  
You touched my heart you touched my soul.  
You changed my life and all my goals.  
And love is blind and that I knew when,  
My heart was blinded by you.  
I've kissed your lips and held your hand.  
Shared your dreams and shared your bed.  
I know you well, I know your smell.  
I've been addicted to you. _

_Goodbye my lover.  
Goodbye my friend.  
You have been the one.  
You have been the one for me. _

_I am a dreamer and when I wake,  
You can't break my spirit - it's my dreams you take.  
And as you move on, remember me,  
Remember us and all we used to be  
I've seen you cry, I've seen you smile.  
I've watched you sleeping for a while.  
I'd be the father of your child.  
I'd spend a lifetime with you.  
I know your fears and you know mine.  
We've had our doubts but now we're fine,  
And I love you, I swear that's true.  
I cannot live without you. _

_Goodbye my lover.  
Goodbye my friend.  
You have been the one.  
You have been the one for me. _

_And I still hold your hand in mine.  
In mine when I'm asleep.  
And I will bare my soul in time,  
When I'm kneeling at your feet.  
Goodbye my lover.  
Goodbye my friend.  
You have been the one.  
You have been the one for me. _

_I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.  
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow.  
I'm so hollow, baby, I'm so hollow.  
I'm so, I'm so, I'm so hollow._

_**Goodbye My Lover**__**, James Blunt**_

**HAUNTED**

**Melior  
Winter, Year 725**

Quietly, she sat in the chill of dawn, wrapped loosely in a black shawl at her window side. The embers in the fireplace are unlit, frost coats the grooves in the stone wall--it is cold enough to freeze her to her bones, but she does not feel it. Like the world outside, she is frozen over; numb, frozen, and empty. She feels nothing.

_Will you stay?_

_**Yes.**_

A weaker woman would have howled with hurt the next morning when she found her lover gone and her bed empty. A weaker woman would have succumbed to the blinding sorrow that ripped through her chest like a raging animal, would have ran to the stables in her robes, her hair tumbled around her shoulders, and search the countryside like a frenzied wild-woman.

Elincia, however, was not a weak woman; she was Queen of Crimea, and she would hold herself as such.

And so, while she animal within her writhed with injustice, twisted in the agony of a love lost, she rose up with the rising sun, stately and Queenly as ever, and went down to breakfast alone.

The court whispers, of course, speculating on the disappearance of Ike, Geoffrey's silence, and Elincia's role in the two, though few hit on the truth. The whispers are quiet at first, like a virus might poison a body, cautiously and quietly, slipping undetected through the cells.

Rumors from the maids later that Elincia's sheets are clean and that she has missed her monthly cycles quickly quell the murmurs of the court and they wonder if she will bear a son for Geoffrey and for Crimea, though only Elincia and Geoffrey know the truth of it.

Only until a healthy baby boy is delivered squalling in the mid-wife's hands with hair and eyes as blue as midnight do the whispers break anew, consuming the castle like a fever. And when Geoffrey volunteers a few months later on a lengthy crusade against the increasingly incessant pirates of the Northern border that would keep him away from the castle and his wife and son, the suspicions of court are confirmed. It was illogical that Geoffrey should leave the wife and his newborn son he so cherished, and if lately his eyes were a little cold, his smile forced, well, it cannot be easy being the General of the Army and the King consort. But then the whisperings from the maids and man servants that tended to the Royal bedrooms that the Queen and her knight's bed sheets were clean for months before and after the appearance of Ike brought about mutterings of Elincia and her illicit lover.

"This is the last moments of our marriage." Geoffrey stood at the window in her room the night before the departure, his hand pressed against the cool glass, basked in moonlight.

Elincia did not reply.

"The people must never know," he continued. "This sham of a marriage we lived. Tomorrow will be our final act, and they will never guess what we were."

"You mean you're not coming back," she clarified.

He nodded. "Never. Live or die, I'll never come back."

_I'll never come back to you again._

"But know this," he said, turning from the window to entwine his fingers in her emerald tendrils. "Despite all the circumstances, know that I have always loved you."

She nodded slowly and accepted this answer, and he released her to return to his rooms one final time.

The pirates of the North were eventually defeated, though it did not come without cost. They were more resilient than expected, and the Army suffered heavier losses than predicted. Eventually, the Crimean Army had cornered the Pirates in a lonely fort by the coast and laid siege to it. Geoffrey, on the final days of the skirmish, was shot by a stray arrow through the chest, and though the wound itself was not fatal, he died of septicemia before the potions arrived.

When she had read Kieran's letter regarding Geoffrey's death, barely legible from tear stains and holes, she tore the paper neatly in two and swept to her rooms. No one dared to follow. Pale and tired, she finally emerged, her jaw set, eyes dry, completely composed.

The years pass, and Elincia breaths a sigh of relief--the kingdom is content and peaceful, her toddler son is healthy and precious, and the whispers have since become mere echoes, the faintest of shadows that linger in the light of a peaceful reign.

But as if the loss of both her lover and her husband were not enough, yet another loss would plague the conscious of her soul.

On his sixth birthday, Elincia bought her young son his own pony so that he could learn to ride. She looked on proudly as he cantered about her in wide circles, beaming and giggling with childish glee. Elincia smiled too--what mother wouldn't, at the precious sight of her child astride a pony?--but bitterness iced the edges of her heart, because that beautiful boy looked so much like his father...

"Look, Mama!" he exclaimed happily, shaking her out of her reverie, sparkling with excitement. "Look how fast I can go!" Grasping tightly with tiny hands the rein, he coaxed his pony into a gallop before his mother could protest, straight towards the hurdle...

She realized all too late. Hitching up her riding skirts, she ran after her son and the pony, already so far ahead of her, shouting. "Oh, no! Darling, don't!"

With a glorious crash and a shout, the pony clambered to its feet, the saddle empty.

Elincia screamed when she saw the body of her son sprawled motionless, neck twisted, eyes open but unseeing, but the sound was silent even to her. She screamed and did not stop screaming even after the men came and carried the limp body of the Prince, her son, away and the women of her court came out to pacify her.

That was seventy years ago.

Silver has since marred her bright emerald hair, lines creased her smooth face. Her bones are brittle with age, and her once-sharp eyes now sightless. Most of the old court has since passed, and the only ghosts of the past that haunt the castle now are in her own mind.

She cannot see, as a young lady-in-waiting points to the horizon and murmurs to the dying queen, the figure riding up to the castle. He is a skilled rider, the girl describes, with a sweeping dark cloak and a sword nearly as large as him strapped to his back, riding his horse with an easy grace difficult to achieve at any age.

The new court, which had never so much as seen the ancient Queen blink an eye in the face of tragedy, is surprised to see tears streaming from her blind eyes as her face lights up with an eagerness they have never seen, her dry lips trembling with emotion as she inclines her head.

The mysterious rider is presented before the court before dinner, as the Queen slowly makes her tiring journey to the Hall. He is introduced as an adventurer who has charted many maps of formerly unknown territories, and she speaks soft words of welcome, a shiver tingling her spine as she feels his eyes on her. They sit to feast, but she cannot bring anything to her lips.

Dinner ends, and the Queen retires to her rooms, unaccompanied, shutting the doors tightly. She wraps herself loosely in her old black shawl and sits by her window, feeling the warmth of the flickering fire slowly dwindle to nothingness. Eventually, the chill of twilight permeates the thick castle walls and the Queen herself. She muses, rocking gently, over the goodbyes she has endured in this very room.

_Will you stay?_

_**Yes...**_

She shut her eyes briefly, the bitterness as fresh as yesterday. Though it was possible the identity of the rider was indeed _him_, she saw little cause that a Queen and a soldier (as he claimed to be) should meet, and he had an even less of a reason to invent one. Still, she would be lying if she said she was not disappointed and hurt by this fact.

_You're not coming back._

_**Never...I'll never come back.**_

Poor Geoffrey. She knew that now; perhaps, she thinks, if they had been born in a different time, she would have loved him as his wife. However, she was cruel to him, she knew it, and her mistreatment of him haunted her long after his death; she had forced the cuckold's horns over his head, subjugated him to the psychological torture of unrequited love and the humiliation of his wife bearing a bastard son in full knowledge of the court.

_Look, Mama!_

_**Oh, no! Darling, don't!**_

Her darling boy, her dear son, snatched away from her almost as quickly as he had come. Though he had not left her in this room, she had sat beside his little body, combing her fingers through his dark hair until she finally had to give him to the men to prepare for burial. And even so, she had followed them, and she herself gently wiped his scrapes clean with a washcloth. So, in a way, she had said her goodbyes to him in her rooms also.

She was tired. So very, very tired...

Perhaps, she wondered as she began to drift off, she would finally be able to say her own goodbyes...

Vaguely, she felt arms encircle her, lifting her up from her cold chair and tucking her under the thick wool covers of her bed. And, dimly, she heard the sound of a small fire crackling softly in the stone fireplace, and the quiet thud-thud of boots across wood.

"Ike?" she whispered, opening her eyes to the presence she felt at her beside.

The presence neither confirms nor denies it. "You're blind," he stated, tracing his hand softly down the side of her cheek. Strangely, she found the contact comforting, and she leaned into the caress.

"The rider," she breathed. "Was that you?"

He hesitated. "No."

"Where did you go?" she asked, her voice tremulous and weak, though she is determined to know the answer. Somehow, she wonders she can almost _see _him, the faintest blur of shapes and shadows.

"Beautiful places," he responded, his voice low and seductive, his fingers now lightly tangled in her fine, silver hair. Her heart fluttered in her throat. "I've missed you, Elincia."

"You had a son," she told him. "He was beautiful, too."

Ike's fingers stop briefly, as if momentarily stunned by the news. The blur become more distinct, and his silhouette is more pronounced. "Where is he?" he asked quietly.

Elincia's lips stretch into a slow, sad smile. "He died when he was just a little boy. He looked just like you."

He was silent for a moment, struggling with the news. "And Geoffrey?"

"He died not long after you left."

Not knowing what to say, Ike took her cold hands into his and rubbed them for a while. "I'm sorry."

He continued to rub her hands, his warm breath fanning across her icy knuckles, and they sat in comfortable silence together for a few more moment, remembering...

_Sitting side-by-side around a campfire, intoxicated by his scent, masculine and metal--_

_Stolen kisses in secluded forests and enemy camps--_

_Moans of sheer ecstasy as they crescendoed in perfect harmony, blissfully unaware of anything and everything else as they made love--_

_Lying tangled in the bed sheets, hand splayed on his chest, feeling his heart beat against her fingertips, listening only to his soft breathing, completely and totally happy--_

_The fated reunion that would set a course of disaster for not only their lives, but the innocents that became entangled in their complicated love--_

_Wanting him, having him, loving him so much she felt her heart would shatter, only to find him gone--_

_Baring her teeth in pain, quashing the instinct to scream as she felt she was being physically torn in two, and then forgetting it all when she held her baby that had such honest eyes--_

_The burning rage and contempt she had felt for herself when Geoffrey walked away forever--_

_Wishing death would come claim her when she saw her son topple from his horse, his body contorted in the dust, broken--_

_The darkness that consumed her as she wanders through the extensive halls like a ghost, haunted by her past, always cold--_

The silhouette before her sharpened, the blurs sliding together at last into a cohesive image, and she was not surprised by what she saw. Ike: his face youthful, his hair full and dark, eyes clear and alert, powerful muscles hidden under a layer of skin, untouched by time.

"Ike," she breathed.

"Elincia..." he whispered.

Her fingers curled around his gently. "I love you."

His fingertips brushed her face. "I love you."

"I'm dying, aren't I?"

"Yes."

Elincia smiled and nodded, and then closed her eyes. Ike sat beside her, his eyes never leaving her face, her small hands, now warm, folded in his, as the last embers of the fire faded to black.

* * *

**ANGEL QUEEN  
ALL THE KING'S HORSES  
****HAUNTED  
end**


End file.
